Increasingly, consumers of computer resources are utilizing the cloud. Cloud computing generally refers to the provisioning of computer resources through a network at the time a user requests those resources.
Cloud computing provides several benefits. One such benefit is costs savings. Before the cloud, users had to invest in their own hardware and software. This led to a high amount of initial investment in information technology. Further, when a user needed only a small increase in computer resources (e.g. slightly more storage capacity), the user typically could only buy new equipment that provided more resources than required.
Cloud service providers generally have many clients, or users. These clients typically store their data on the cloud service provider. For a variety of reasons, such as privacy, the cloud service provider typically partitions user data and other objects. However, if several users have data in common, some efficiencies of cloud computing are lost when the cloud service provider maintains several copies of the common data. Further, there are overhead costs associated partitioning data. There is a need, therefore, for an improved method, article of manufacture, and apparatus for partitioning cloud computing systems.